Blogmeister’s Note: This is a piece written by a friend of The Border Blog. He is a Mexican National, a university student who attends the university in El Paso and a good guy. Especially, if one is looking for an insight, note the second to last paragraph and multiple it by the millions.
The BB welcomes all viewpoints, especially this one . Thank you, Javier :
Why I Voted For Felipe Calderon
I was listening to my aunt Lupe while we were driving down Periferico
Sur highway about a month ago in Mexico City. She told me about Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (editor:AMLO), the presidential candidate (at the time), and how he managed to obtain the votes of lots of people in Mexico City by offering social assistance to senior (over 65) people and single moms while he was the city’s mayor.
Aunt Lupe is not that old yet and she isn’t a single parent either, what frustrated her about all that was the increasing debt the city had gotten into. “The solutions of his
administration will be the problems of the next one”, she said. Lopez Obrador’s social assistance was indeed a monthly allowance of around $60 dlls to those who qualified. But people like me, Mexicans living up north, around the border with the US, never hear about these situations.
I have no problem saying that I voted for PAN’s Felipe Calderon on July
2nd.
Why?
Simply because from what I heard about AMLO’s campaign, the relationship with Mexico-USA would have changed if he would have become president. He was called “anti-American” by some and I remember the warning of my cousin’s wife, Kelly, about how American companies were thinking about removing their capital from the touristy and sunny Mexican beaches if AMLO would have reached the office at Palacio Nacional.
The good or bad relationship of our two countries affects me and my
family directly because we live here (editor’s note: here means in Mexico and the US).
I hope I voted correctly.
Javier Vicencio.